The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Simple Rules of Business
Wednesday - June 14, 2006 02:43 PM in
I have a handful of rules I try to follow in business:
- Deal fairly and honestly with everyone: customers, suppliers, and employees.
- Admit mistakes, and do your best to correct them.
- Don't try to be something you aren't.
These rules are, honestly, trite. Probably every management advice book ever written can be summarized as some variation of those three rules. Actually following them isn't so easy.
For example, I challenge you to find a company--any company, anywhere--that does a good job of following Rule #2. When someone points out a mistake, most people's instinctive reaction is defensive.
I was reminded of the value of these rules this week when Rick, who is at a conference in San Diego this week, reported that VocaLabs has a big fan embedded deep inside a Big Company. Big Company isn't a current VocaLabs client, but one of our clients did a project for them a couple years ago which involved a VocaLabs survey.
At the time, we made a minor mistake on the survey which was embarrassing, but didn't do any harm. We responded the only way we could: we corrected the mistake, and sent an e-mail to everyone affected explaining the mistake and how we fixed it.
Apparently this small act of fessing up had such an impact that the team leader at Big Company still remembers it a couple years later, and mentioned it to Rick as a reason he wants to do business with VocaLabs.
I'm not claiming that we do a great job of admitting mistakes. We can be just as defensive as anyone else, but there's no doubt in my mind that when we can do right by our customers, we do well for ourselves, too.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 02:43 PM by | | | |